Keyword: robotics

1. Youngstown, U.S.A. The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977. For much of the 20th century, Youngstown’s steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a homeownership rate that were among the nation’s highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet...

The contest is a battle of robots on an obstacle course meant to simulate conditions similar to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. Team Kaist's DRC-Hubo humanoid robot defeated 22 others to win the top $2m prize from the US Department of Defense's Darpa research unit. The robots had an hour to complete a series of tasks, such as a driving a car and walking up steps. The challenge involved a series of tasks for the robots to complete, somewhat autonomously, with intermittent connectivity with their operators to simulate real disaster conditions. The challenge was the first where robots performed...

[Most of these, except for a couple, are very positive achievements. Let’s work for more in 2015, Happy New Year!] The Most Futuristic Predictions That Came True In 2014 By George Dvorsky As 2014 comes to a close, it's time to reflect on the most futuristic breakthroughs and developments of the past year. This year's crop features a slew of incredible technological, scientific, and social achievements, from mind-to-mind communication to self-guiding sniper bullets. Here are 15 predictions that came true in 2014. Technologically-assisted telepathy was successfully demonstrated in humans For the first time ever, two humans exchanged thoughts via mind-to-mind...

Was This The First Robot Ever Arrested? On August 18, 1982 the Beverly Hills Police Department took a rather unusual perp into custody: a robot called DC-2. The crime? Illegally distributing business cards and generally causing a commotion on North Beverly Drive. It was probably the first time a robot had ever been arrested. When BHPD approached DC-2, the person operating it via remote control refused to identify himself to police. Officers searched the immediate area, but whoever was behind the thing was nowhere to be found. The bot's mysterious operator wasn't afraid of a little joking around though, despite...

Samsung Group subsidiary has worked on a robot sentry that they call the SGR-A1, and this particular robot will carry a fair amount of weapons that ought to make you think twice about crossing the borders of South Korea illegally – as it has been tested out at the demilitarized zone along the border over with its neighbor, North Korea. The SGR-A1 will be able to detect intruders with the help of machine vision (read: cameras), alongside a combination of heat and motion sensors. The whole idea of the Samsung SGR-A1 is to let this military robot sentry do the...

Speed and agility are hallmarks of the cheetah: The big predator is the fastest land animal on Earth, able to accelerate to 60 mph in just a few seconds. As it ramps up to top speed, a cheetah pumps its legs in tandem, bounding until it reaches a full gallop. Now MIT researchers have developed an algorithm for bounding that they’ve successfully implemented in a robotic cheetah — a sleek, four-legged assemblage of gears, batteries, and electric motors that weighs about as much as its feline counterpart. The team recently took the robot for a test run on MIT’s Killian...

Researchers based in Norway believe that in around 10 years time cargo ships will have the technology to sail the seas without the need of a captain or crew. Marintek, part of the SINTEF group based in Norway, is one of a number of partners working on developing systems which can operate without the need for humans. The "Seatonomy" project is looking to have ships sailing without human crews in the next 10 to 20 years. The 12 million kroner ($1.9 million) research investment by SINTEF could actually improve ship safety as human error causes more than 75 percent of...

Progress in robotics, from drones to medical applications, is starting to come at a fast clip. Do you want your robot to cook your food, or just deliver it?The days of drones filling the sky and robots roaming in our streets are not far removed from reality anymore, and scenes from movies like Star Wars, Minority Report and I, Robot will be common soon. Just consider some of the ways that robots have started to permeate our lives. Start with Amazon, which is taking to drones in a big way. The online shopping giant started a new phase in high-tech...

RoboBrain marks the dawn of cloud robotics Posted by: Emily Smith August 25, 2014 in Tech RoboBrain is the new attempt of artificial intelligence researchers to create a cloud-based database that would help out existing and future robots. In theory, RoboBrain is supposed to be a massive database of all the information robots have been taught so far and offers the possibility of increasing that knowledge as well. The main idea behind RoboBrain is that the cumulative knowledge robots have been able to gather should be collected in the same place, namely cloud storage, and made available to every robot...

A team of researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have created a new sprinting robot inspired by a velociraptor. The robot, dubbed the Raptor, runs on two legs, and is capable of running 46 kilometers per hour (kph), or 28 miles per hour (mph), on a treadmill, according to CNET. Raptor can run faster than Usain Bolt, Olympic sprinter and the fastest known human, who has a recorded top speed of 44.7kph (27.44 mph). The robot is almost as fast as Boston Dynamics' Cheetah, which can run at 47kph (29.3 mph). Both Raptor and Cheetah...

ST. LOUIS • They’ve trounced hundreds of robotics teams at regional and state competitions. And Thursday, about 12,000 students in safety goggles will convene at the Edward Jones Dome and America’s Center for the chance at world champion status.It’s the fourth year in a row that U.S. FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — has held its top competition here, drawing competitors from 38 countries.The matches will be timed and intense. The crowds thick. The stands loud.Through it, thousands of students will demonstrate their knowledge of programming, and electrical and mechanical engineering.For self-proclaimed geeks, it’s a...

Autonomous vehicles will save thousands of lives. But what about the ones they take? Robot cars will save lots of lives, but they'll also open up some tricky liability issues. You are a terrible driver. By human standards, you might be pretty good, but you'll never be able to match the reaction time, 360-degree monitoring, and prescient awareness autonomous vehicles will soon provide. By almost any estimate, taking the wheel out of the hands of human drivers—when the technology is ready—will save thousands of lives. "Human beings just aren't that great as drivers," said Rand's James Anderson. Driverless cars "could...

Iranian teacher uses hi-tech robot to encourage prayers An Iranian schoolteacher has come up with a novel way of encouraging young children to learn their daily prayers. 27-year-old Akbar Rezaie, who teaches the Quran at the Alborz elementary school in Varamin, near Tehran, took a robotics course and applied his knowledge to help modify an educational robot kit. He says the aim is to provide pupils with a stimulating visual example of a variety of Shi’ite worship. “I used to pray hastily but now I want to pray more slowly like this robot,” said one student. Now, pupils in this...

Todd Blatt is betting that Google Glass will benefit from a few accessories when it is released to the public next year. The first is a camera cap. Already, the 30-year-old 3-D designer has had people shield their face from him while he was wearing his pair of phonesyncing glasses, a sign they don’t trust that he’s not recording them. Blatt, a Baltimorean who also lives in New York, used the crowd-funder Kickstarter to finance GlassKap, a plastic device that fits over the camera lens, and other Google Glass accessories. He scored a pair of the glasses as part of...

By now, you’ve definitely heard about the Burrit0bot — pretty much the most awesome 3D printer in the world. It lets you make burritos … with your iPhone. (If you hadn’t heard about this till now, go ahead and collect your brain pieces from the floor.) Burrit0bot is, very sadly, still a prototype designed by an NYU grad student named Marko Manriquez for his thesis project. Meaning that it hasn’t been made yet. So — to appease your disappointment — we decided to round up all of the grub that already can be made by robots. To follow, your futuristic...

If Seattle fast workers demanding a big raise in the minimum wage get their way, they'll soon be replaced by robots says KIRO Radio's John Curley, who points to growing automation as a warning to those who want $15 an hour or more to flip burgers. A group of local fast food workers recently staged a one-day walkout and are calling on the Seattle City Council to increase the minimum wage from $9.19 per hour - the highest in the country - to $15 an hour. "We're asking for $15 because in order to support one person in a one...

How's this for a weekend conference: Some of the smartest people in the world are gathering in New York to try to figure out how to build lifelike copies of humans ... to be eventually uploaded with the contents of a real human brain. It's the brainchild of a Russian multimillionaire, Dmitry Itskov. ... And he says he's perfectly serious, and that it could be accomplished by 2035. Crazy? The New York Times gave Itskov a front-page profile on its Sunday Business page a week and a half ago. Imagine this ... a digital copy of your brain in a...

Campaigners call for ban on "killer robots" LONDON (Reuters) - Machines with the ability to attack targets without any human intervention must be banned before they are developed for use on the battlefield, campaigners against "killer robots" urged on Tuesday. The weapons, which could be ready for use within the next 20 years, would breach a moral and ethical boundary that should never be crossed, said Nobel Laureate Jody Williams, of the "Campaign To Stop Killer Robots". "If war is reduced to weapons attacking without human beings in control, it is going to be civilians who are going to bear...

Robotic automation has long been the domain of manufacturing, but of late, service robots have made an often entertaining and sometimes gimmicky leap to restaurants in China, Taiwan, Japan, and increasingly the US. Please accept the following video ode to Singularity Hub’s favorite restaurant robots of the past few years. Noodle bot: Knife-brandishing chopper of noodles, you terrify and inspire us in equal parts. You slice noodles with grim efficiency, and for that we are grateful. (VIDEO AT LINK) Sushi bot: Although the high art of sushi-making may best be suited for human hands, we hold your pace of 3,600...

Simple chemical reaction powers robot to make lofty leaps. Kaboom! Controlled explosions in the legs of this silicone 'soft robot' make it leap higher than 30 times its own height. Researchers led by George Whitesides, a chemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have engineered a three-legged silicone device that is powered by combustion — previously used only in hard systems such as diesel engines. The soft robot has in each of its legs a channel with a soft valve at the end. Methane and oxygen gases are fed into this channel in a ratio of one part methane to...

Audi’s automatic driving for parking Audi’s automatic parking systems operate by means of either ultrasound or cameras, which display images via the onboard monitor. One particularly convenient solution is park assist. When backing into a parking space, it performs all the necessary steering movements; it can handle both parallel parking and parking perpendicular to the street. The system finds a parking space with ultrasound sensors that scan the roadside in two dimensions while driving at moderate speed. The system notifies the driver via a message in the display once the sensors have found a space which is large enough. If...

G.E. Hardiman I – Ralph Mosher (American) Hardiman is a name derived somehow, from "Human Augmentation Research and Development Investigation." and Man from MANipulator. Sometimes written as HardiMan, Hardi-Man, Hardi Man, Hardiman I. Said to also be officially called the "Powered Exo-skeleton." Note: some reports suggest that only one arm of Hardiman's was built. The above photo usually accompanies that comment, but it is incorrect. A complete Hardiman was built with both arms, but the comment refers to the earlier tests of just the single, upper manipulator. Later, even when the full machine was built, one side was made static,...

Engineer Dallas Goecker attends meetings, jokes with colleagues and roams the office building just like other employees at his company in Silicon Valley. But Goecker isn't in California. He's more than 2,300 miles away, working at home in Seymour, Indiana. It's all made possible by the Beam -- a mobile video-conferencing machine that he can drive around his company's offices and workshops in Palo Alto. The five-foot-tall device, topped with a large video screen, gives him a physical presence that makes him and his colleagues feel like he's actually there. "This gives you that casual interaction that you're used to...

Machines have had a presence in the US Military for quite a while, with bomb disposing robots and sky drones becoming quite abundant in the US Military and to a smaller extent even local law enforcement. But those machines still rely a lot on human intervention that limits the actions they may take. That is why the US Navy has given a three year $900,000 grant to the Georgia Institute of Technology to work on what many are calling the “MacGyver bot.” The robot may not be able to start a truck with a pen and turkey baster, but the...

A competition to develop next-generation robots capable of saving lives in disaster zones has been unveiled by the Pentagon's advanced research laboratory. Darpa says it wants "adaptable robots with the ability to use human tools - from hand tools to vehicles". It plans to hold a series of emergency response physical challenges. A $2m (£1.3m) prize is being offered to the team with the best technology. The competition begins in October. The agency says it hopes software engineers, video game developers and other experts from fields outside robotics will take part "to increase the diversity of innovative solutions". Radiation-resistant

Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor. A special microphone attached to the frame records the notes made by the "couch guitar". 1:40 video at the link

Congress is demanding drones in the air over the United States - without considering the civil liberties issues. Within the span of three days last week, the House and then the Senate passed a law - H.R. 658 - requiring the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to speed up, within 90 days, its current licensing process for government use of drones domestically and to open the national airspace to drone aircraft for commercial and private use by October 2015. While the law requires the FAA to develop guidance on drone safety, the law says absolutely nothing about the privacy or transparency...

The General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Lab, located at the University of Pennsylvania, is already well known for its work with quadrotors. In the past the quadrotor research team has managed to get a quadrotor flying aggressively, meaning it could land on angled surfaces and maneuver through small windows at high speed. Then the quadrotors were taught to work together to build a tower structure.A new video posted by the GRASP Lab shows that development of quadrotors isn’t slowing down. Alex Kushleyev, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar have advanced the quadrotor’s behavior to the point where they now...

A jail in the eastern city of Pohang plans to run a month-long trial with three of the automatons in March. The machines will monitor inmates for abnormal behaviour. Researchers say they will help reduce the workload for other guards. South Korea aims to be a world leaders in robotics. Business leaders believe the field has the potential to become a major export industry. The three 5ft-high (1.5m) robots involved in the prison trial have been developed by the Asian Forum for Corrections, a South Korean group of researchers who specialise in criminality and prison policies. It said the robots...

For some time I’ve been trying to justify owning a robot without coming across as “that weirdo with the robot.” Now, I think I finally found my cover: A robot that bakes cookies! Mario Bollini and Daniela Rus of the Distributed Robotics Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have taken a PR2 robot, which is made by the robotics company Willow Garage, and programmed it to mix dough from scratch, make a giant cookie and then bake it in an oven. There are some caveats though (besides the giant cookie part). The PR2 robot costs about $400,000. In June,...

Several decades of using PCs and watching reality television have made us poor collaborators. I mean, look at me as a case in point: I sit in my office on most days typing away at my computer, perfectly content to be by myself and create articles and work on my next set of speeches and videos. I don't need any staff, I can do it all from the comfort and privacy of my desktop.Yes, I have a large group of people that I work with to produce my stories and arrange my meetings: editors, production people, and so forth. Sometimes...

A quadrotor aircraft mated to a Microsoft Kinect sensor - the latest feature of the Microsoft Xbox360 video game platform - can hover around a University of California-Berkley lab, sense objects in its path, and then pause until the object is removed. The video also shows a simulated grid view through the Kinect sensor – looks straight out of a Terminator movie. [Watch the video ]

Unsuccessful in its latest bid to plug the oil leak off the Louisiana coast, BP on Sunday announced a new attempt to place a "containment cap" atop the gushing well one mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Robert Dudley, managing director of BP, said Sunday on CNN that the new remedy, which could take up to seven more days to take effect, is not a sure thing, and wouldn't capture all the leaking oil even if it works.

Governor Deval Patrick today joined NASA Administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden to announce that Massachusetts has been selected to receive a $1,515,024 grant as part of the NASA Summer of Innovation pilot program. Beginning this summer, and continuing for a three-year pilot program, NASA will partner with six Massachusetts higher education institutions to use the agency’s mission and technology programs to boost summer learning, particularly for students who are underrepresented and underperforming in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Massachusetts was selected as one of only four states to receive grants. ... The six Massachusetts programs awarded funding were:...

Here’s another beef I have against my local paper: they glorify robots. Haven’t you seen articles in your paper, usually from AP, that talk about robots as the next big thing? Or they’re already here--wow!! Here is a headline that actually appeared in the Norfolk paper: ROBOTMAKER BUILDS AN ARTIFICIAL BOY. This is complete nonsense. The fact is, we have wonderful industrial robots assembling cars, etc. We also have a lot of ingenious remote-controlled devices such as drone aircraft. Conceptually, however, these are much like radio-controlled toys. If by robots you mean something more or less like a human, they...

I'm not kidding. I think that's a very positive title. Senario, known to enthusiasts as the distributor of Pleo the baby dinosaur, is rolling out a new remote controlled robot with a price tag of about $10. This is interesting. Think about DARPA's strategy for ubiquitous robotics. It needs a broad range of developments in the consumer market to drive further development and bring prices down. We now see a full spectrum of prices and capabilities emerging. If you want the most advanced humanoid robot on the planet, you could go for a REEM-B with Brainstorm software. I expect...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a major new initiative to create robotic autonomous manipulators that mimic the human hands, an agency program manager said. For the past several decades, the research agency and the robotics community have concentrated their efforts on programming ground robots to get from point A to point B, said Robert Mandelbaum, a DARPA program manager who focuses on robotics and autonomous systems. That challenge has for the most part been tackled, he said. The autonomous robotics manipulation program will take on a new goal, creating an inexpensive hand-like device that is as adaptable as...

NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries. Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants.

10 lucky research organizations will stand to benefit from Willow Garage's PR2 Beta Program, under which they will each be granted free use of one PR2 robot and earn the privilege to participate in the advancement of open source robotics development. Willow Garage, an organization dedicated to the development of robotics hardware and open source software, has put up the PR2 Beta Program to enable breakthroughs in personal robotics, expand the open source robotics community, develop reusable components and tools, and explore new applications for personal robots. These initiatives are aimed at eventually building safe personal robots that can aid...

Leavenworth — Editor’s note: Reporter Mark Boyle takes us behind the scenes of news stories in the area. This week, he catches up with members of the U.S. Army in charge of evaluating and testing the military’s latest equipment. Protecting our soldiers is the top priority for the U.S. government, and it has developed a way to do just that through military robots. Reporter Mark Boyle controls the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, or SUGV, military robot at Fort Leavenworth during a military modernization exercise. WALL-E, meet SUGV. The character in the Pixar animated film of 2008 has a real-life counterpart,...

Diagnostic Devices, Inc. (DDI), the maker of Prodigy blood glucose monitoring systems, and the leading provider of audible meters, is leading what could be a made-in-America revolution by doing the unthinkable and bringing manufacturing jobs home from China, according to experts in international trade. "Given the recent economic downturn, there is no shortage of critics of the U.S. economic model - which is based on free markets, innovation and creativity," explained Stan Vinson, banking and financial services professor at Northern State University. "When you see businesses relocating to the United States from perceived low-cost manufacturing countries, it reaffirms our ability...

Just when you were getting used to the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over your city, they're beginning to enter buildings. This flying robot designed by a U.S.-German team recently won a contest in which the goal was to autonomously navigate inside a simulated nuclear power plant and find and image a control panel without the aid of a GPS. The Pelican, based on hardware designed by German start-up Ascending Technologies with programming by a team at MIT, accomplished the mission on its fourth attempt, but with only a few minutes to spare. It netted a $10,000...

A robotic sub called Nereus has reached the deepest-known part of the ocean. The dive to 10,902m (6.8 miles) took place on 31 May, at the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean. This makes Nereus the deepest-diving vehicle currently in service and the first vehicle to explore the Marianas Trench since 1998. The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight tether. Its thin, fibre-optic tether to the research vessel Kilo Moana allows the submersible to make deep dives and be highly manoeuvrable. THE NEREUS SUBMERSIBLE Weight on...

The Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons football team, was recently crowded with cheering fans and adrenaline-filled competitors. A thrilling competition crowned new champions. But this was not a football game. It was a robotics competition for high school students interested in engineering, a program that now attracts about 200,000 student-competitors and nearly 100,000 volunteers. Known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), this program demonstrates that there is no shortage of American engineering minds. Started nearly 20 years ago by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the clever Segway that officials scoot around on, this competition...

In the movies, Cyberdyne is a corporation whose superintelligent computers lead to the fall of mankind in the "Terminator" series, and HAL is a superintelligent computer who takes over a spaceship in "2001: A Space Odyssey." In real life, Cyberdyne is a Japanese robotics company, and HAL is Hybrid Assistive Limb, its full-body, "Iron Man"-like exoskeleton designed to help people with weak muscles or disabilities. ... The U.S. military has been trying to develop robotic exoskeletons for decades to help soldiers carry heavy loads or move at high speeds. But at a suggested retail price of about $4,000 (for Japanese...

LANCASTER [California] - In "The Wizard of Oz," the Tin Man sought a heart from the wizard. Lancaster High School's Tin Man already has dozens, however. The 43 members of the Eagle Robotics team, together with many more advisers, mentors and parents, demonstrate that it takes more than brains and courage to build a successful program shaping the leaders of tomorrow. It takes a lot of heart, too. The Tin Man, the team's most recent robotic creation that was unveiled to the public Thursday, is only one physical manifestation of the team's prodigious efforts. The wider effects are seen throughout...